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Summary UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is looking ahead to new efforts to tackle Syria crisis.
Air raids, clashes and car bombings shook Syria on Sunday, killing around 100 people, monitors said, as world powers look to pick up the pieces of a failed bid to bring in a Muslim holiday ceasefire.Rebels stormed regime positions in the Damascus suburbs as air strikes pummelled opposition-held areas on the outskirts of the capital, activists and a watchdog said.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, updating an earlier toll, said a regime air raid strike in the northwestern province of Idlib killed 18 people, including eight children and five women.The four-day truce proposed by UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi already collapsed amid clashes, shelling and car bombings hours after it had been due to take effect with the start of Eid al-Adha holidays on Friday morning.On the eve of the official end of the ceasefire, the army blamed its failure on violations by rebels, who say they have only reacted in self defence.With hopes shattered of even a temporary halt to the 19 months of bloodshed in Syria, diplomats said Brahimi is looking ahead to new efforts to tackle the crisis.He is to go to the UN Security Council in November with new proposals to push for talks between President Bashar al-Assad and the opposition, diplomats told AFP, and will head to Russia and China this week to discuss the crisis.The political process will not start until Assad and the opposition have battered each other so much that there is no choice. They are not there yet, but Brahimi has some ideas, an envoy at the Security Council said.On the ground, rebel forces seized three military posts in the Damascus suburb of Douma amid fierce fighting and killed four soldiers at another checkpoint in the region, the Syrian Observatory said.A car bomb hit the northern Damascus district of Barzeh, wounding around 15 people and causing heavy damage, it said, while another one ripped through Sbeineh, southeast of the capital, without any casualties reported.Regime warplanes hit the nearby towns of Irbin, Zamalka and Harasta, where the military has been trying for weeks to dislodge rebel forces, the group said.They also struck a building in the Idlib provincial town of Bara, killing 16 people including seven children and five women, the Observatory said.At least 96 people were killed nationwide, including 35 soldiers, 32 rebels and 29 civilians, according to a count from the Observatory.The Britain-based Observatory relies on a countrywide network of activists, lawyers and medics in civilian and military hospitals.
